What Nelson Sees: A New Perspective on London from Trafalgar Square

Doğukan Güngör
Sep 22
2 min read

The London Design Festival is one of the most significant events celebrating and promoting the city as a global design capital. Every year, installations, pavilions, and exhibitions appear across different parts of London, allowing the city to be rediscovered through the creativity and diversity of design.

This year’s festival once again brings remarkable works to various corners of the city. In our previous article, we featured Lee Broom’s Beacon, a monumental light installation at Southbank. You can read that piece [here]. Another highlight of the festival is What Nelson Sees, designed by Paul Cocksedge in collaboration with Google Arts and Culture. Installed at the base of Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square, the work invites visitors to see London for the first time from Admiral Nelson’s vantage point.

London from Nelson’s Perspective

The installation is designed as a freestanding structure composed of intersecting tubes. Acting as telescopic viewing portals, these tubes encourage visitors to look out over the city’s skyline from Nelson’s perspective. In this way, a view hidden for nearly two centuries is finally opened to the public.

With Google’s AI-powered filmmaking tool Flow by Veo, the experience goes beyond the present-day city. Visitors travel back in time to see how London has transformed over the past century—from horse-drawn carriages to modern traffic, from gas lamps to contemporary streetlights. The scenes then fast-forward into the future, envisioning streets adapted to climate change, pedestrian-centered urban spaces, and a city producing more of its own food.

Standing in Trafalgar Square for nearly 200 years, Nelson’s Column becomes more than just a historic monument. Through this project, it transforms into a lens that sparks reflection on the city’s past, present, and the possibilities of the next century. What Nelson Sees unites history, imagination, and speculation, offering visitors a completely new way of experiencing London.